The Gustav Sonata is a novel by English author Rose Tremain published in 2016 by Chatto & Windus.

[6] The novel is split into three parts: Set in post-war Switzerland where Gustav Perle and his best friend Anton Zwiebel live in a fictional small town called Matzlingan.

Gustav then joins the Zwiebels on a holiday to Davos where the boys play in an abandoned TB hospital... Before the war, Gustav's mother Emilia attends the local Schwingfest wrestling festival where she falls for Erich Perle, the Assistant Police Chief in Matzlingan.

She gets pregnant and they marry, but the pressure of the Jews migrating across the Austrian-Swiss border make her husband's job difficult, and he pushes her and they lose the baby.

Erich then starts falsifying entry dates to allow Jews to enter Switzerland, he therefore loses his job and his apartment as a result and, Emilie moves to live with her mother.